I lived for four years on the edge of Moss Side in Manchester and came to love this place and the people I got to know for whom it is home.  Granted, I was curb crawled within days of moving in, saw drug deals take place outside my front door (and shocked my middle class friends by not phoning the police - I quite like being alive!  But that is about drugs not Moss Side) and was a victim of the postcode trap that meant my household and car insurance were astronomical at a time when my dependable income was £0 pcm; at least I had the reserves to pay for them.

I have been saddened and irritated by the way national media have handled the tragic death of Jesse James - only yesterday I flicked round ceefax localnews and found numerous murders in other regions.  Of course it is a tragedy when someone is murdered, and from the comfort of middle class, middle England, easy to ask what a lad of that age was doing out in the wee small hours.  But I was annoyed at the whole portrayal of Moss Side - and maybe even Manchester - as gang-land; annoyed that a gang (or was it actaually two gangs?) in 'South Manchester' (i.e. cannot have been Moss Side) with guns brazenly flashed for the camera was presented as normative; annoyed that the reporter was a nice white woman (how brave! not) whizzing through on an arterial road.

Moss Side and Hulme are areas of Manchester that have changed dramatically in recent years, enough so that the slogan 'Moss Sides Views Have Changed, have Yours' was used by the council in 2001 to celebrate the fact that at a time when, away from media glare, violent crime decreased old through routes were openned up, older houses refurbished and new ones built.

Karline Smith's book 'Moss Side Massive' is set in Moss Side/Hulme around 1990.  It is not a happy story, but it gives a perspective on the experience of young black men caught up in the drugs/gun culture.  I guess I was attracted to it as parts of it were set literally in the street where I lived.

Page 194 says ‘Drug gangs and gang warfare.  Guns.  Extortion.  Violence.  Intimidation. Some people compare Moss Side to hell.’  Sadly, this week the news reporters seem to be saying the same thing.  Perhaps the one saving grace was an article in that lesser read publication the Baptist Times.  Here the local Baptist minister gave an honest inside impression that showed that while there is much to mourn, Moss Side is also a place of hope.  I guess it strikes me that the majority of the ministers in the Moss Side area (with the obvious exception of the Catholic Priest) are women - something not unusual in inner cities and so-called 'tough pastorates'. 

Never did know how to spell that word, maybe it doesn't matter since it is self explanatory.

Last night was the Dibley and District Churches Together meeting which I was chairing.  It had some good moments - another church has decided to think about joining in and their minister, complete with dog collar and brief case, had come to the 'Council of Churches' as he insisted on calling us.  We managed to appoint people to organise most of the activities planned in the next three months - and I only ended up with one action, hurrah!

After sharing news from the churches I opened a short time of open prayer, inviting people to pray for the other churches' needs.  One of my colleagues, from a tradition nominally highly organised, always prays pretty much the same thing, and while I think I know what he means, it always makes me simultaneously cringe and fight off the giggles.

'We put Jesus in the centre... we lift Him up... we magnify Him...'

Every time he says it, I have a mental image of a circle of people dragging Jesus into the middle of the ring and hoisting Him up onto their shoulders in some sort of gymnastic/acrobatic maneouvre.  Then as He perches precariously on human shoulders someone gets a magnifying glass to make Him seem bigger...

OK, I'm sure that is not what is intended, but there is implicit some theology I struggle with...

Whilst I'm sure my colleague's "putting Jesus in the centre" is more what the Victorians would have deemed "looking unto Jesus" the words used imply that it is us who somehow control where Jesus goes - not unlike the parody of the missionary who carries Jesus in his/her suitcase.  It is not, I would argue, we who put Jesus at the centre but instead who ask God to help us align ourselves with where He is.

'We raise Him up, we magnify Him'  Yes of course I know what these mean, but I do wonder if they make any sense to folk not schooled in religious langauge.  It is, afterall, a Baptist minister who once used as a 'children's talk' the idea that the pulpit was a magnifying machine and made it 'magnify' a match stick into a pencil, a pencil into a broom handle and a tennis ball into a football who is to blame for my desire to giggle during this prayer.

It is easy to critical of other people's attempts at prayer, which may be infinitely more sincere than my own but maybe those of us who lead public prayer have a duty of care in our choice of words?

It has been a funny sort of a week in and around Dibley, rather disjointed yet with a few moments of connection-making and new insight.

Being carless (or at least active car-less) until Friday meant lots of public transport with all the attendent hassles.  On Tuesday a twenty minute walk to a suitable bus stop for a ten minute ride to the next town for a one hour meeting.  Then a ten minute wait for the same bus inorder to return the long way round taking 40 minutes!  On Thursday a lift to a railway station taking 20 mins in order to catch two trains to get me to Manchester in just under 3 hours and then the reverse journey taking over 4 due to delays and cancellations.  It made me appreciate what it is like having to rely on public transport when you don't live near Oxford Road in Manchester or Oxford St in London!  New Saxo, I am glad to have you!

It was rather odd being in Manchester for another 'end of era' event with my final NAM conference before Min Rec (by any other name) in December.  Seven years' association with NBC reached it's conclusion - how fast it has gone by and how much has happened in that time.  It was good to catch up with friends and also to recognise that the time has come to move on.  Of course like a bad penny or Arnie 'I'll be back' if only when I visit the university as part of my ongoing studies.

The Church Meeting on Thursday was one of those 'wow' things where you walk away wondering how you got from A to B so painlessly!  We agreed to release funds for the essential manse repairs (costing about £1k), agreed to spend money on mission/outreach in a pub and even managed to home in on the central themes of mission, fellowship and worship (in that order) for our discussion with D+1, with only one person wanting us to focus on buildings and none on finance, governance or admin, let alone the colour of the hymnbook.

Yesterday we took the wrinklies to Southend (well, strictly Westcliffe on Sea) for the day and had a great time in sweltering sunshine.  We set off with 24 and came back with the same 24, despite one or two ladies hoping they might have been kidnapped by a nice young man!

All of this seems quite disparate and yet at the same time it links up and connects with the parable of the sower we looked at today, and my emphasis that the sower must risk a portion of last year's harvest in order to sow this year - and that this year's harvest provides the seed for the next sowing.  I risked a lot when I left work to train for ministry and yet the sowing of my time, money and intellect gave an abundant harvest of new insights, new visions and new energy.  I have NBC and the congregations I worked in Manchester to thank for providing the soil - good, rocky and thorny - that yielded another harvest.  Being in a small Home Mission funded church is risky but I have invested my time and talent in working with the good folk to here towards another harvest: twenty four wrinklies in the sun at the seaside is a good harvest from the first planting!  Part of seed from my last academic training is being replanted as I work towards a higher degree and the potential harvest of new knowledge that can once more be reinvested for the future.

When I set out on this path in 1997, when I began training in 1999, when I was called in 2003 and settled in 2004 I had no idea what type of 'soil' I was sowing with the precious seed.  Yet each time despite the struggles and frustrations the God of all eternity has returned me a harvest many times over.  Not always what I wanted, rarely what I expected, but the harvest that gives me the seed for another season.

This all feels a bit waffly and self-indulgent but it has been good to see that in the muddle of an ordinary week there are still extraordinary things happening.

Getting going now on our four week parable series called 'Harvest Tales' and busy re-writing the parable of the sower to give a clearer sense of time scale to a 21st century audience.  It's a good story (in the orignal, not my retelling!) of 'people like us' here in Dibley, and maybe the church in general, who find ourselves powerless in a land we once thought was ours.  Having no building, and no real prospect of one, we are forced to 'sow' in any bit of land we can find - even if a path runs through it, brickbats or rocks protrude through the soil and the weeds from next door threaten to choke whatever we plant.

It is a story of commitment - it takes several months from sowing to harvest

It is a story of risk taking - how much, if any, of the seed will actually grow?  Will there be a harvest?

It is a story of hope and a future - despite all the uncertainty and mishaps along the way there is a superb harvest.  Enough that the sower can make the required offering to God, feed the family, maybe sell some and leave some for the gleaners and after all this has been done, still have the seed to plant for next year.

The familiar gospel interpretation of the parable used in Sunday School is not without its mysteries - the private sharing with the 12 and the sudden change of metaphor part way through - trying to read/hear the story from the viewpoint of the first century peasant audience has allowed me to see more readily how it speaks to our situation.  As the old song says, 'the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from God's word'

There is a stereotype of the vicar who pootles about the country lanes in a clapped out Morris Minor.  I have for the last 21 years had my own stereotype driving around 250,000 miles in one or other of my two blue Metros.  Today that era ends as my current Metro failed its MOT spectacularly (the first one it has failed in the ten years of its 'life') and now must face the inevitable last journey...  Yes, I'm a sad individual who first names and then gets attached to lumps of metal with four wheels attached, but my little Metros have served me well and I will miss the teasing about driving them!

So, a new era begins, and with the demise of Rover, I must begin to learn about a new make of car.  Any suggestions for dark blue, five door hatchbacks..?!

PS (added 10/9/06) can anyone explain why the indicator bulbs were fine two months ago when it was serviced and at the MOT suddenly became 'the wrong colour'? 

Updated 11/9/2006: Today I became the owner of three-year-old, dark blue, five door Saxo... plus ca change, plus le meme chose!